Using Ecosystem Services in Community-Based Landscape Planning: Science is Not Ready to Deliver - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 84

current performance under changing external conditions (such as climate change).
The process of landscape change can be viewed in terms of these dynamics of the
SES.
Landscape services may be valued from an individual or a common perspective.
Crop growing allows the farmer to earn money, but the pattern of crops influences
the attractiveness of the landscape to human visitors. Thus, valuation is a com-
munity process in which individual and common values are determined and
negotiated. This is done in the social component of the SES, where farmers, water
board representatives, citizens, entrepreneurs, visitors, as well as local govern-
mental, NGO and pressure group representatives constitute a social network with
formal or informal structures (Jansen et al. 2006 ). Their interactions interfere with
actors at higher governance scale levels. For example, for the implementation of
international or national legislation, local authorities may have regular debates in a
regional setting. Also, for discussing water management, a local water manage-
ment authority will take part in regional governance networks.
The outcome of a landscape services valuation process can be a motive to adapt
the local landscape. Such a need may be elicited within the boundaries of the SES,
because of emerging aspirations (for example entrepreneurs who see opportunities
to expand their business) or evolving perceptions of value (for example, urban-
izing populations attributing more value to experiencing nature). Inhabitants may
want to improve the quality of the surface water running past their back yard,
while farmers may be interested in the delivery of a natural pest control service.
But the demand may also come from higher levels of spatial scale. Weekend
visitors from the city next door may call for a restoration of historic landscape
character. A response in the SES may also be elicited by changes at higher level of
institutional or jurisdiction scale level (due to a change in national environmental
policy) or economic scale level (e.g. a change in world market prices for crops).
National health insurance companies may discover the value of green infrastruc-
ture in improving the mental health of citizens (Ward Thompson 2011 ). All
examples refer to opportunities to create added value. But a demand for change
may also be invoked by reported threats of current values, for example if predicted
changes in precipitation patterns make a future increase in flood damage risk
plausible. So, emerging demands may originate from various levels of scale, and
the local community will be challenged to find an appropriate response, which
balances their own needs with those of the wider society.
The outcome of this process can be some form of formal agreement among
representatives of community groups concerning why, where and how to intervene
in the physical pattern of the green infrastructure to achieve the envisioned level of
landscape services. Such a plan has to take into account that the functioning of
green infrastructure partially depends on higher levels of scale, the green infra-
structure may continue beyond the planning boundaries, extending its total area to
a more robust level able to support more species than the local planning area (see
Opdam 2013 for an overview of scale sensitive landscape governance).